00;00;01;22 - 00;00;26;27 J.R. Jamison Jamison: I'm J.R. Jamison. Today on the Facing Project, I'll sit down with number one New York Times bestselling author, psychotherapist, and public thinker, Thomas Moore, to discuss his new book, “The Cure at Walden Pond,” a beautiful and accessible exploration into the human condition that helps readers slow down, be more present and mindful in their relationships with their loved ones, and appreciate the beautiful world we share. 00;00;27;00 - 00;00;58;03 J.R. Jamison Drawing wisdom from Henry David Thoreau’s timeless “Reflections,” “The Cure at Walden Pond” offers a thoughtful entry into what it means to live with greater intention in a fast moving world, and how mindfulness can transform the way we relate to ourselves, the people we love, and the communities we call home. In this episode, Thomas and I will dive deeply into the human condition and how reconnecting with nature and embracing moments of quiet can help us find clarity and hope during uncertain times. 00;00;58;03 - 00;01;12;21 J.R. Jamison In a culture that constantly demands more of our time and attention, I found my time with Thomas to be a balm to my soul, and I hope you will too. Stay with us. [Theme music] 00;01;12;23 - 00;01;36;26 J.R. Jamison Jamison: You're listening to the Facing Project and I’m J.R. Jamison. My guest today is number one New York Times bestselling author, psychotherapist, and public thinker, Thomas Moore. His new book, “The Cure at Walden Pond,” is a beautiful and accessible insight into the human condition that helps readers slow down, be more present and mindful in their relationships with their loved ones, and appreciate the beautiful world we share. 00;01;37;02 - 00;01;39;21 J.R. Jamison Thomas, thank you for joining me on The Facing Project. 00;01;39;21 - 00;01;43;04 Thomas Moore Moore: Thank you for having me, J.R., it's my pleasure. 00;01;43;07 - 00;01;58;15 J.R. Jamison Jamison: “The Cure at Walden Pond” is one of more than 20 other books on spirituality and depth psychology that you've written, and you're now in your mid 80s. Talk about the decision to return to Walden and to Thoreau at this particular moment in your life. 00;01;58;17 - 00;02;37;12 Thomas Moore Moore: Well, it's really hard for me to answer that. I, I've been reading Thoreau for, for many years. Obviously, I guess obviously he, he's a fellow compatriot of mine in many ways. I live about an hour and a half down the road from him where he lived in Concord, Massachusetts. So that's something. I like reading my neighbors, Emerson and Emily Dickinson and all those people, interesting people that have become my friends in a way, over the past few years, the past years that I've lived here. 00;02;37;13 - 00;03;10;20 Thomas Moore So that's one thing. Another is that I discovered I really hadn't thought about it much, but I discovered what a good writer he is, and he has a different style of writing in the 19th century. You know, it's a little archaic for us, but I enjoy his wit and I enjoy the insights he has. He expresses them in ways that are quite different from the way we talk, and they come through as fresh. 00;03;10;25 - 00;03;37;27 Thomas Moore So that's what drew me to it. I thought, I have to read him more closely now. So I read a great deal in his journals and his essays and some of his letters. And I got the impression that this is somebody really worth listening to. So it's been a great pleasure for me to go back to Thoreau, spend some time with him. 00;03;37;27 - 00;03;43;13 Thomas Moore I don't expect to spend a lot more time with him, but I enjoy the time I did. [Laughter] 00;03;43;16 - 00;04;06;27 J.R. Jamison Jamison: All, too, that you mentioned early on in the book that this is not really a book about Thoreau. It examines him and his cabin by the lake for lessons in how to renew our lives. Was there a chapter or even a single sentence, as you were writing this book that took longer to arrive to than others because you had to first live or relive it yourself? 00;04;06;29 - 00;04;32;13 Thomas Moore Moore: Really a good question. I would say that what struck me most about what he says, what he does, is that- and it's close to my own background. I have a PhD in religious studies. I have studied myth and ritual and world religions for most of my life. I was a monk when I was a young person, Catholic monk, you know. 00;04;32;13 - 00;05;10;01 Thomas Moore So I've been in that realm. And Thoreau has this wonderful ability to look at ordinary things and see myth, see mythology, see a bigger world, a deeper, more mysterious world. For example, he says that when he- whenever he's on a river, paddling on a river, usually in a boat that he has made, he is always on the Ganges river, you know, and I don't think that's a poetic or a light statement. 00;05;10;01 - 00;05;49;19 Thomas Moore I think he really means it, that when I am on a river, I am on a mythic river. I'm not on the literal H2O that's underneath me. I'm- I'm on, what I would say, it's alchemical water. It's a special water of the imagination that he is on. Deep imagination. That's very important. He's able to actually get into another world, and in that he's sort of a, you know, a visionary and almost like a shaman who can be in different worlds at the same time. 00;05;49;22 - 00;06;21;05 Thomas Moore I think that Thoreau is much greater personality than we think. He's not just a naturalist enjoying nature from a distance. He's, he has- he has this very ancient capacity to be in a, in a deeply mysterious world, I would say a mythic world, the world of myth. And that's what really struck me, that he was this person, because I know what that kind of person is like. 00;06;21;06 - 00;06;29;08 Thomas Moore I've spent my life studying these kind of people, and I didn't know that he was that, but I think he is. 00;06;29;11 - 00;07;02;13 J.R. Jamison Jamison: I loved that reference of the river Ganges, and it makes me think about my own place and where I live, and my connection to nature and understanding of myself, but also my place in this order of things. There's a little brook that runs by my house that I love to just sit by, and there's a little footbridge over it, and I'll sometimes stand on the footbridge and reflect on this brook that it's not the Ganges, but it could be the Ganges. 00;07;02;13 - 00;07;09;05 J.R. Jamison And there is something about our place in the world, but our place where we live, too. 00;07;09;10 - 00;07;49;03 Thomas Moore Moore: Oh yes. Absolutely. I live on a pond. We call them ponds in New England. It's a small lake. If it's less than I think, it's 20ft deep, it's called a pond. And Walden Pond. And I live on a pond that's about a mile long. And I- the room where I write looks out on the pond. So it was very easy for me to imagine Walden Pond right in front of me as I wrote this book, because pond I live on is really the very same thing that Thoreau found 00;07;49;03 - 00;08;26;15 Thomas Moore at, at that lake, that body of water in Massachusetts. I live in New Hampshire, not too far away. But, you know, I think it's the same thing. But for me, for my- because of my studies and my reading and my experience, I think of it as a pond, almost of poetry, of literature, of of religion. You know, Thoreau also says that the rivers are the same rivers that flowed in the Garden of Eden. 00;08;26;17 - 00;08;54;03 Thomas Moore I like that reference too, because what he's saying, I think, is that when he left, when he left his home in Concord to go two miles to, to live there on the side of that, next to Walden Pond, he found the Garden of Eden. I mean, he found whatever that reality is, he discovered it for himself, and that's what he lived. 00;08;54;05 - 00;09;01;06 Thomas Moore He did not live by a body of water. He lived in the Garden of Eden for two years. 00;09;01;08 - 00;09;18;16 J.R. Jamison Jamison: That makes me think about, the title of your book is “The Cure at Walden Pond.” But you write that it's it's it's, it's not a prescription. Right? But it's something that we discover. Talk more about what that distinction means to you. 00;09;18;19 - 00;09;44;04 Thomas Moore Moore: Well, “cure,” to me, first of all, let me get to it this way. I wanted to use the word “cure” because I feel that Thoreau was quite a bit disturbed when he went to Walden. He didn't know what he was going to do with his life. Originally, he thought he'd be a poet and his poems were rejected. You know, it was not accepted that way. 00;09;44;05 - 00;10;07;29 Thomas Moore And he took that seriously and personally. And he didn't know what to do, really. He had been to Harvard. He was at Harvard before he went to Walden. And he, he I think what he, what he- what he felt was that 00;10;08;02 - 00;10;37;20 Thomas Moore he needed a cure, you know, he needed, he needed something. And he says at the beginning of, of, of his - well, toward the early part - of his journals, that he needed to find a way to live, so that when he came to the end of his life, he wouldn't think that it was worth nothing. And that was- there's some anxiety in that statement, you know, I'm a psychoth- think I'm a psychotherapist. 00;10;37;20 - 00;11;02;18 Thomas Moore I hear those things all the time. And I listened for them. So he was my patient there for a few minutes. And I thought, I've heard this kind of thing before. There's some anxiety there. He's troubled. He wants to find a solution. He needs a cure. We need a cure badly. We live in a society, we haven't- I don't think we are looking properly for a solution to our problems. 00;11;02;18 - 00;11;27;17 Thomas Moore We're looking too superficially. Thoreau was not superficial. He had to leave home in a sort of rite of passage for him to leave home and go off by himself to see if he could discover what he needed and to be cured. We need to be cured. So I think this book is speaking to that need that we have today, especially America. 00;11;27;18 - 00;11;58;14 Thomas Moore Emerson, who was Thoreau’s good friend and mentor in many ways, often wrote about the need for an American way of living, an American way of thinking. We needed to let go of the European way, he thought. And I mean, it was really he was really close to that, close to the revolution, the American Revolution. So I feel that we need to- it's very American. 00;11;58;14 - 00;12;24;21 Thomas Moore I think we need to discover very deep down what our American values are. They’re really good. Our values that we profess are excellent. The Statue of Liberty is a wonderful image for us, but we don't, you know, we don't understand it. We've lost it. And I think that's why so many Americans are lost. So I'm hoping that my book is a cure. 00;12;24;23 - 00;12;40;16 Thomas Moore It fits in with my life as a, as a therapist and with my other books, which are about curing. [Downtempo relaxing electronic music] 00;12;40;18 - 00;13;13;29 J.R. Jamison Jamison: But to that point, when I think about our modern world in the United States, we are divided by and because of many things. And one of those is social media, right? In some ways we're more connected than ever, but also more siloed than ever. And we see that people are waving their flags, putting themselves in camps. You write about this in your book, but there's also an important piece you write about remaining cool in circumstances when emotions are high and recognizing that we all bring cold and warmth. 00;13;14;02 - 00;13;29;27 J.R. Jamison You write that Thoreau shows us to see the warmth in the cool and the chill in the warmth, and the goal in most things is not to appreciate opposites, but to see how they live in each other. How does that or what does that teach us in today's divided society? 00;13;30;00 - 00;13;57;04 Thomas Moore Moore: Well, I think it's, it's pretty easy to see, actually. I thought- I was thinking about this unrelated to our conversation this morning, just thinking about our situation, that there are ways in which we could, we could easily, I think, fairly easily empathize with those who disagree with us. And there is a deep division, you know, the division- and it isn't brand new. 00;13;57;04 - 00;14;33;15 Thomas Moore It's been with us for a long time, and sometimes it's a religious difference. I've had a lot of people tell me that it's hard for them to go visit their families because of the religious differences and spiritual differences they have, aside from many political issues. So I think that's been with us a long time. And this, I think, is really what Americans are challenged to do, that our founding, our, our philosophy is to have differences and to come together with our differences. 00;14;33;17 - 00;15;06;08 Thomas Moore Now, what that means, I think, means that we don't expect to agree with each other, but we do try to understand where the other person is coming from and what they're what their deeper issues are, their deeper feelings. I think it helps- I hear this from people today sometimes. It helps when you think of people that you like and love who think differently from you, like certain members maybe of your family or neighbors or friends that you have. 00;15;06;12 - 00;15;43;02 Thomas Moore You really like them, but you can't stand the way they think about certain things. You know, it's- I think that in that situation, it's very important to emphasize where your friendship is and where your family feelings are and hold them, be with them and help that lead you to understand that even though you have different ways of thinking politically or spiritually, religiously, that the ground really is union rather than separation, that is your ground. 00;15;43;03 - 00;15;52;15 Thomas Moore Think of yourself as human beings. I think that's in the message of Thoreau, and I hope it's in my book. 00;15;52;18 - 00;16;08;05 J.R. Jamison Jamison: It makes me think of, too often we don't think of people as stories, but people are stories. Can you talk more about how you think stories, and perhaps places like Walden Pond, will help recover empathy in a divided world? 00;16;08;08 - 00;16;35;06 Thomas Moore Moore: Well, Thoreau is, if anything else, he's a great story. He's a, he's a person in his own story. He's a character in Walden Pond. He's not just the author, he's a character. He's the one who goes through this experience. He leaves- oddly, you know, he leaves home. There's someone like, maybe in the old days, people went into the desert, you know, to get away and find themselves. 00;16;35;06 - 00;17;04;10 Thomas Moore Or they go- you know- they cross the world. A lot of people do things like that. He went two miles in walking distance of his house. So what he did was not a literal separation. It was a deep internal separation that he made. His act was a ritual act. It wasn't a literal act because his mother and sister used to come several times a week and bring food to him at his cabin 00;17;04;10 - 00;17;36;12 Thomas Moore by the lake. I mean, that's not going off into the desert. That's not making, you know, a strong, wild retreat away from civilization. It's an act. It's an act that says something, but it's not to be taken too literally. So I think he's a character and his story is very interesting that way. If you take his life as a story, I think it makes it more accessible to you, the reader, too, that you could more easily be like Thoreau. 00;17;36;13 - 00;18;04;13 Thomas Moore You don't have to imitate him literally. You don't have to do anything heroic. In fact, just the opposite. If you're heroic about it, you're not Thoreau. He was not a hero. People laughed at him. People thought he was silly going off, leaving, you know, going two miles to be by himself. They, and they, they saw him come into town almost every day, and they said, you know, “What is he doing? 00;18;04;13 - 00;18;31;18 Thomas Moore He's pretending to be a hermit when he's not really a hermit.” For them, it was a joke. For him, it was a ritual act. And he said over and over again he used that idea of ritual. He says that, that when he goes for a swim in the pond, when he rises early in the morning, when he eats small meals, those are sacraments to him. 00;18;31;18 - 00;18;53;07 Thomas Moore That's the word he uses. Those are sacraments. Now, that word is big in my Catholic background. Sacrament. It's an act you do that is symbolic. It's not meant to be a big, literal, heroic act. It's a simple thing you do. It's not so big. You eat fish on Fridays. That's when I grew up. We eat fish on Fridays. 00;18;53;08 - 00;19;20;18 Thomas Moore Is that supposed to be a great, a great deprivation? It wasn't. We enjoyed fish on Friday [laughter] part of life. So it wasn't that heroic sacrifice. It's a, it's an action that speaks to the heart rather than to some to the world itself. And it can change you. So I think that's what we have to learn about about him, that he is a story. 00;19;20;18 - 00;19;25;20 Thomas Moore And what he does is more story-like than heroic. 00;19;25;22 - 00;19;57;25 J.R. Jamison Jamison: And this ritualness, to him- ritual also connects us to community. So this idea that you're talking about fish on Fridays is a part of the Catholic tradition. And, and all or most, right, Catholics are doing that on Friday. That's a connection to a broader community. And as you mentioned a few times, Thoreau only lived a couple miles from his, his, his mother's house and from town, which is something I never really thought about. 00;19;57;26 - 00;20;20;17 J.R. Jamison Right? Like I think on a cursory level, we think of Thoreau as some kind of recluse, but the reality is he was connecting also with community. You write, “Take a walk down a city street or a small town and notice how neglected the buildings, roads and sidewalks are. If we loved them, we might be unsettled by their disrepair. 00;20;20;19 - 00;20;39;28 J.R. Jamison If we could feel some empathy for them, we might feel an intimacy with them and even sense their love coming back.” Tell me more about this idea of kind of ritual, and about this connection with the natural world that connects us to our communities and neighbors, and appreciation of place. 00;20;40;01 - 00;21;16;22 Thomas Moore Moore: In that passage, Thoreau says that, how could he be lonely? He's surrounded by chipmunks and fish and trees and telephone poles, you know, I mean, he, he's surrounded by not only nature, but by things, and things are his relatives just as natural things are. He talked about his chipmunk, the chipmunks around him as his cousins. He liked that, that comparison, that they are his cousins, but the other animals are his friends. 00;21;16;23 - 00;21;54;05 Thomas Moore And he said, how could be- How could he ever be lonely? Well, I think that's, that's an important lesson for us too. We also are surrounded by things. That's my example of walking through town, all those things that you see and probably a lot of things that you love because they're familiar to you, like walking down on the street in New York City, you know, that could be you'd see all kinds of friends there, buildings that, you know, statues, parks, trash cans, all kinds of things that you may have a relationship to. 00;21;54;07 - 00;22;20;16 Thomas Moore You really do have a relationship to them. They mean something to you. You're glad they're there. Maybe you're not glad that some things are there, but they're part of your world, and you can, you can feel belonging to that world. And if you can have that sense of belonging, it's part of a, it's part of your community. And I think if you have that, it can work both ways. 00;22;20;16 - 00;22;48;22 Thomas Moore But if you have that, you can also more deeply appreciate the people in your life and the communities of which you are a part. You're, all of us are part of many communities, and they are so important to us, but we take them for granted, or we don't give ourselves to them, or we don't allow ourselves to feel and depend upon the love that's there. 00;22;48;22 - 00;23;19;18 Thomas Moore And I would say, with Thoreau, that, although it sounds a little odd that things can love us too. You know, just because you like to have something in your, in your environment that you, that you love, doesn't mean that they depend upon us in some way, and that their existence depends on our existence, that we are in a community of sorts and in a certain way, the way things do it, 00;23;19;19 - 00;23;39;00 Thomas Moore they can love us. You have to have this kind of, maybe even odd imagination and maybe a mystical sense of things to be able to say that. But I wish that we could say that I can't be lonely because I have all these things that love me. You know, we have a relationship. 00;23;39;03 - 00;24;01;24 J.R. Jamison Jamison: What I love about that notion is that the natural world is teaching us empathy. I think about during the pandemic how I slowed my life and became intentional. And I still try to live that way. And I notice every morning, two little squirrels who live in the oak tree in my backyard, they come down at the exact same time every morning. 00;24;01;29 - 00;24;28;26 J.R. Jamison They chase each other around the yard. They're trying to find what little crumbs they're left under the bird feeder. Eventually the birds come out. A little chipmunk comes out from the shed. You know, he or she lives under there and comes out too, and tries to find what little things are there. And it's that noticing, right, that connection to the depth of the earth, noticing the tree, but also the insects and the birds and the sounds of each, all mixed with the wind. 00;24;28;27 - 00;24;51;18 J.R. Jamison It's taught me to walk and be more gentle and better understand the world that's around me. And as you mentioned, that same kind of noticing then lends itself to human-to-human and to broader community. What do you think the world would look like if we all practice this type of noticing in depth? Would we become kinder? Would there inevitably be outliers? 00;24;51;19 - 00;24;53;29 J.R. Jamison What do you say to that? 00;24;54;01 - 00;25;19;07 Thomas Moore Moore: Well, community and relationship, even communities, are special to us, to our temperament, to our history, to the things we want in life. So you don't want to be a member of every community that comes along. I don't want to. There all kinds of communities I don't want to join. But there are many that I, I really appreciate, that 00;25;19;07 - 00;25;46;15 Thomas Moore I want to, for various reasons, to be part of, where some that life has invited me to be part of. For me, like Thoreau, he has, he has an essay or some words about a branch, a willow branch fluttering over a brook. And as that's the way we ought to live, that we should let the wind show us what we should do and how to move. 00;25;46;15 - 00;26;09;10 Thomas Moore I think in that sense, we should let the wind take us to the community we want to belong to. We should let life reveal to us the people that we need in our lives. You can't just make that a plan. You can't make it rational and, and figure it all out and put it all on some sort of grid. 00;26;09;12 - 00;26;35;14 Thomas Moore I think what we have to do is live our lives as a response to the invitations that are around us. To me, that's the core of religion. Religion means to respond to rather than to create, than to make. It means to respond to. And do you say, “Yes,” when you're invited to do something? Thoreau says, when you go for a walk, you leave your house. 00;26;35;15 - 00;27;00;27 Thomas Moore You should walk out the door and just walk. Don't decide where to go or which direction to go. Get out there and walk. Let the road show you. Let, let the wind show you. You know, let the day show you where to walk. You know, just walk. And I love that idea because I think that is really a part what it means to be deeply, naturally religious. 00;27;01;00 - 00;27;05;21 Thomas Moore And that's- I think that's the essence of who Thoreau was. 00;27;05;24 - 00;27;28;20 J.R. Jamison Jamison: And I loved reading the analogy about the willow leaf over the creek, or the, or the brook, or the body of water and the westerly wind. You write about leading you in that direction. You've mentioned that so much of your life, you've, you've followed that wind and to much success. And I think about the people in my life who are planners, right? 00;27;28;22 - 00;27;48;17 J.R. Jamison They draw kind of the quadrants and the boxes to help them make decisions. But really it's kind of the being in tune with your noticing. Right? Talk about how that has led you to success, and if you would have maybe charted your life, how you could have ended up possibly in a totally different life. 00;27;48;20 - 00;27;51;17 Thomas Moore Moore: So shall I be in de- Should I tell you in detail? 00;27;51;23 - 00;27;52;14 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Sure. 00;27;52;19 - 00;28;21;14 Thomas Moore Moore: Okay, so when I was- It started when I was about- well, it started at the beginning, but I grew up in an Irish Catholic family, working class family. My dad taught plumbing and was a plumber when he started out. He was a very, very philosophical plumber. That's what I call him. He was a very thoughtful plumber and very skilled, but they were very devout Catholics, all my, my whole family. 00;28;21;14 - 00;28;47;02 Thomas Moore And so when I was 13, I decided I wanted to be a Catholic priest. I saw priests around me, and I liked who they were and what they did. And I- But I was not just interested, I was inflamed. I really- just overtook me, you know? I just had to do that. And it meant leaving my wonderful family, whom I loved. 00;28;47;02 - 00;29;11;15 Thomas Moore So I was torn. But the thing was so strong in me. That was the willow leaf. There was a hurricane. It wasn't just a gentle breeze. This hurricane came along, and I left home, and I didn't go back for 13 years. I was 13 years in a Catholic monastery, and I loved it. I have to say, I loved that life. 00;29;11;19 - 00;29;31;15 Thomas Moore And when I look back on it now - I’m 85 now. When I look back on it now, I, I think that, you know, I don't know what I would have been if I hadn't left there. And the world opened up for me. I may have been a plumber, you know. Probably would have been. My dad wanted everyone to be a plumber. 00;29;31;15 - 00;29;53;25 Thomas Moore He thought it was the greatest thing in the world, and I could, which is fine. You know, I could have lived my life that way, but I didn't. But I immediately, as soon as I left home, I entered a much bigger world. My first day away, I began studying Latin and Greek, you know. I mean, that opened up a huge world for me. 00;29;53;25 - 00;30;16;03 Thomas Moore I'm still using my Latin and Greek in my books. I still, I still write with with Latin and Greek sources. I try to make them intelligible to my readers, but I still do my own work with the Latin and Greek. So there I was, in a bigger world. When I got to be 26, I woke up one morning after a lot of change around me. 00;30;16;03 - 00;30;37;12 Thomas Moore It was the 1960s, and I thought to myself, wow, it's over. This is over. And I was shocked because I thought I'd do this all my life. But I knew at that- in that morning it was over. I went to talk to the man in charge, the priest in charge, and I said, “You know, I can't do this anymore.” 00;30;37;14 - 00;30;50;15 Thomas Moore He said, “Oh, you ought to take a year, you know, and sort it out.” I said, “No, this morning, it had occurred to me. I mean, the same thing that got me into this struck by lightning, sort of. It struck again today, and it's over.” 00;30;50;16 - 00;30;51;23 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Wow. 00;30;51;26 - 00;31;18;00 Thomas Moore Moore: And so I left, and they gave me $300, you know, to make a living. I didn't know what to do. I needed to make a living, support myself and get out there in the world. I hadn't been in the world. I didn't know how to do it. So I did that, and I didn't, you know, I eventually - I don't want to go into all the details - but there- one other big thing happened to me. 00;31;18;02 - 00;31;49;05 Thomas Moore I became a university professor, which was wonderful. I love teaching at a university. I was teaching religious studies and psychology, my courses combined, and I loved it. And I did it for about eight years, and I thought everyone loved it. I thought I was in, you know, in a good position there to spend my life at it. One day, the head of my department called me and said, “Tom, you're- we had to fire you, you know, we had to let you go.” 00;31;49;05 - 00;32;14;24 Thomas Moore And they wouldn't tell me why. They had a meeting. They couldn't tell. You wouldn't tell me why. I had a pretty good idea. But- So there I was. And he said, he said, “Well, you can, you can, you know, you can appeal- You can go and complain to the, to the higher ups about this.” And I said, “Oh no, I heard you, you know, you told me, I know it's- I've heard this before. 00;32;14;25 - 00;32;39;07 Thomas Moore It's time for me to change.” So I changed. That was the third big step for me, to make a change based on, you know, that time, based on my the- voice of my friend and the chair of the department I was in. And I took that as the voice of the angel Gabriel, saying this, I'm not I'm telling you, your life is going to change now. 00;32;39;13 - 00;32;52;02 Thomas Moore So I did that. Those, and then there were smaller ways I did it, but I would be in a whole- I don't know what I would be if I didn't follow those indications. 00;32;52;04 - 00;33;21;13 J.R. Jamison Jamison: And I think too often in the modern world, or maybe over time - well, I would argue that in the modern world - I feel like it's becoming more acceptable or the norm, where people aren't leaning into those kind of, what you write in the book, “swamps and ravines,” right? These moments in our life that can be kind of messy, but teach us lessons or show us a kind of different way. 00;33;21;13 - 00;33;49;23 J.R. Jamison I think all too often, especially among young people, there's this kind of vanity of always showing the success, but not really leaning into what we learned from where we didn’t succeed in some areas. You also apply, kind of, the “swamp and ravine” idea to modern towns and inspiring kind of the idea of forest waving above and frightening forest rotting below. 00;33;49;25 - 00;34;19;11 J.R. Jamison Thoreau wrote, “Such a town as fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages.” Later, in what I considered connected is your chapter “A Village, A University,” and this idea that any town or city could become a place of learning by bringing in speakers and artists not just to colleges and universities, but to town centers where everyone has access to beauty and knowledge in different ways of learning and understanding. 00;34;19;13 - 00;34;40;17 J.R. Jamison I think too often that cities kind of aim for this prosperous piece, right? And this kind of like shining city on the hill. And unfortunately, when they do that and they think about their economy, they leave behind artists and deep thinkers, which I would argue, and I think you would too, are a crucial part of ecology, of place. 00;34;40;23 - 00;34;46;00 J.R. Jamison Talk, talk more about this and what cities could learn from Thoreau. 00;34;46;03 - 00;35;21;11 Thomas Moore Moore: Well, what you're saying, I think, is exactly the point that we get interested in the wrong things. We have the wrong goals. We think that economic success is the main goal. It's important, certainly, an important a part of life. But actually, I would say that what the poets and philosophers can give us is more important, really more important. You can have a lot of money, you can have a lot of success and power and prestige, but you can be depressed. 00;35;21;18 - 00;35;55;03 Thomas Moore You can have a terrible history of bad marriages. You can have children that are acting out all over the place. I don't think you want that, but that's a pretty common picture in our society. So we do have, I think, with Thoreau, we have the wrong goals. And he says it even more clearly. He says if you have to make a choice between having a special teacher in your town or city or a new bridge, forget the bridge. He says, get the teacher. 00;35;55;05 - 00;36;18;18 Thomas Moore He's waking- he's as clear as can be on that point. So he's telling us, don't just do the practical thing that's going to make life a little easier, physically more convenient. He says go for the thing that really makes your people into real people. People who can reflect and think, take their lives seriously and deal with their problems. 00;36;18;21 - 00;36;41;24 Thomas Moore I think if we could have that kind of an education in our cities, we wouldn't need psychotherapists like me to pick up the pieces. You know, it's that would really solve a lot of problems. [Upbeat R&B electronic music] 00;36;41;26 - 00;37;22;09 J.R. Jamison J.R.: Yeah, I think about, in our community, we have a space called Canan Commons, where it's mostly musicians gather and play shows, and we have free community concerts. But this got me started- I started thinking about what if we actually had free public lectures in the community in this space as well? Like a, like a, like a lecture series, that I think as a college town - or we're partially a college town here where I'm at - too often we rely on the university to do that, and it's open to the public, but really it's university people and people who are adjacent to university people who are going to these lectures and not really the community in a way 00;37;22;09 - 00;37;35;24 J.R. Jamison that feels free and accessible. And this made me think, what if we had more of these spaces in communities where these kinds of talks and lectures could happen? Would people go? I would hope the answer would be yes. 00;37;35;25 - 00;38;09;00 Thomas Moore Moore: Well, they would go if it were done in the right spirit. The only trouble with the university model for that is that you have grades in the background. People think of, you know, you have professors who speak a little too high, you know, too high and mighty for the ordinary person. So I think what we'd have to- I mean, I know that Thoreau uses as his example Abelard, who was a philosopher, you know, of the Middle Ages, really high standing philosopher. 00;38;09;02 - 00;38;31;24 Thomas Moore But I think what he meant was someone who was deep enough, thinks deeply enough, and talks to the common issues of people. So I wouldn't want to have lectures on all different sorts of topics. I would like to see more like the Lyceum of New England that Thoreau was part of, lectures that were given in the local churches, 00;38;31;24 - 00;38;59;14 Thomas Moore usually. I've given lyceum lectures myself here in New England, and what I've done when I've given them is try to speak to the ordinary person about issues that matter. I don't bring up high intellectual matters at those ICM talks. I try to talk about ordinary things that we all are concerned about and try to shed some light on them, so I think that we could do it. 00;38;59;14 - 00;39;31;23 Thomas Moore I love the idea of what you're suggesting. Maybe a spot under a certain tree where you can expect on Saturdays, someone's going to give a talk that you really want to listen to, and maybe you'll have some people coming through town who are worth listening to in an ordinary Saturday way to give a talk at that special place that the high minded professors are not really invited unless they can get off their their high stool, you know? 00;39;31;26 - 00;39;52;25 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Yeah, I love this idea because when I think about, I mean, you write about, right, kind of the beauty of Thoreau, and you even say this about yourself, the beauty to be educated and knowing, but also be able to be a common person. You call him- He called himself a clodhopper, right? And you call yourself that too in the, in the book. 00;39;52;26 - 00;40;19;01 J.R. Jamison And it's that kind of normal speak that provides access that I, I fear too often when things become too university speak, it turns people away from that. One piece that you wrote that resonated with me was this the mouth of the reptile and releasing the materiality of life, to see the free beauty around us and connecting to the depth of the earth releases us from greed. 00;40;19;01 - 00;40;43;08 J.R. Jamison And it's connected to this idea, I think, because it also made me think about my privileged life. Right? I have a master's degree, I'm an author and an educator. I host a radio show. These have granted me the ability to meet extraordinary people, to travel the world, and it's also providing me the ability to seek a transcendental life and a way of being in tune with and finding my place in nature. 00;40;43;10 - 00;41;05;00 J.R. Jamison So naturally, I started thinking about those who are less privileged and how access to knowledge is sometimes a privilege in and of itself. What about those who are born into, let's say, a cycle of chaos who only know the tyranny of the moment? How do we connect them to these teachings that I feel are invaluable? 00;41;05;02 - 00;41;39;08 Thomas Moore Moore: Well, it doesn't take a whole- I guess, it doesn't take a huge intelligence. It takes a certain turn of mind to take what we usually considered classic learning, like, let's say, poets or some of the great old stories, wonderful stories of the of the past, or even contemporary writers and painters. It doesn't take a whole lot to be able to present that to people in a way that excites them. 00;41;39;11 - 00;41;59;16 Thomas Moore Ordinary people, you can do it. One of the things that has surprised me, I teach mythology, and when I do teach, I teach a course online and I teach a lot of mythology in it. And people tell me, you know, they've taken mythology courses before. They didn't know that meant that had anything to do with their own lives. 00;41;59;22 - 00;42;27;28 Thomas Moore And I'm shocked because myth has everything to do with your own life. You know, there's so many stories that, that speak to the depth of your emotion and your feeling and your problems. And these stories are so deep and so interesting, and you can explore yourself through them. I mean, Freud did that. He talked about the story of Oedipus, you know, and, and he said, that's what happens with fathers and childrens. 00;42;27;29 - 00;42;52;16 Thomas Moore You know, there's sort of an Oedipus story lived out. It doesn't take a lot. You don't have to be super intelligent to do that. You just have to be able to think imaginatively and have your heart with the person you're with. And they don't have to have your same education at all. They can just be people that you, as human beings, you can connect with. 00;42;52;19 - 00;43;19;21 Thomas Moore That's what I try to do in my, in my books. I try to- I really try to write to the average person. The same time, I try to write to artists who can appreciate a more poetic kind of writing and, and talking. I do try to do that, and I don't think it doesn't take too much away. People sometimes tell me that I should be more intellectual in my approach. 00;43;19;24 - 00;43;41;23 Thomas Moore Well, I've got all that, but I don't bring it out in my books. I don't make that front and center. It's in the background. I hope it's there in the background. But, you know, it's not, it's not the central thing. I want to speak to the ordinary person. I used to, when my dad was alive, he lived to be 100, so he was alive for a long time when I was a writer. 00;43;41;23 - 00;44;04;01 Thomas Moore And I would send him my books, and he would write back, send me a list of words that he had never heard before. [Laughter] We’d discuss those. And then he- But he'd tell me how much he enjoyed and appreciated the things I wrote, and I figured he was my test. If my father, the plumber, could enjoy and understand what I wrote, I was okay. 00;44;04;04 - 00;44;27;18 Thomas Moore If he was having trouble with certain words, I'd have to reconsider them. Didn’t mean that I wouldn't use them, but I would reconsider them if they were valuable to me. But I think that- I think we can, we can do our work that way. We can- We can realize that we live in an ordinary world. I like to use the word in this book about Thoreau, “vernacular.” 00;44;27;20 - 00;44;54;02 Thomas Moore I think he was a vernacular liver, a writer. He could write about the world he lived in. In that sense, he was vernacular, the language of his own time and place, not the language of some remote, high minded, you know, school somewhere, the language of where he lives. That's what vernacular means. And so he was a very vernacular person. 00;44;54;04 - 00;45;21;23 Thomas Moore I try to be a vernacular writer. Anyone can be vernacular, standing there in your beautiful park where people will listen to someone who has something to say, an ordinary language but beautiful language and maybe uplifting. Thoreau says that when you go to, go to a bookshelf to check a book out to read, be on your tiptoes; don't get the lowest thing there you can find. 00;45;21;24 - 00;45;33;02 Thomas Moore Get the highest book, the highest kind of reading. Elevate yourself with it. Don't put yourself down. But while you elevate, choose something you can enjoy and appreciate. 00;45;33;04 - 00;45;57;17 J.R. Jamison Jamison: And I think that's so true of your message and of your, this book. It's deep. There's depth. Right? It goes deep. It asks us to go deep. But the language was so accessible that I read your book in 4 or 5 hours. I mean, I just devoured it because I just wanted to continue reading, and I think that says something about the accessibility of language. 00;45;57;19 - 00;46;15;24 J.R. Jamison And Thoreau talked about living deliberately, right? So I think that's part of the message, too, is deliberate living that is accessible to anybody, to have that kind of- to live deliberately. But in an age I'm thinking about his constant notifications. I'm thinking about my morning, right? I came into this where I'm like, I'm going to have a mindful day. 00;46;15;27 - 00;46;36;07 J.R. Jamison But then there was the ringing, the pinging, the dinging that happens with my phone, my email, right? All these ways that people can reach us at a time where we just sometimes want to step away. What do you say when something like that, right, like spikes, anxiety? What might living deliberately look like in a tech savvy world? 00;46;36;09 - 00;46;58;21 Thomas Moore Moore: Well, you can be like Thoreau in some ways, and I guess I'm like him. I did say that both of us were quite eccentric. That means that we don't fit neatly into the world around us. That's one step you can take. I've been saying this for 30 years since I first started publishing my books. Be eccentric, you know, if you can. 00;46;58;22 - 00;47;20;11 Thomas Moore Don't don't fit in, fit into all of the crowd. One way it happens to me, I don't plan it this way, but I don't answer a lot of emails and phone messages. People are always complaining to me that I haven't, I haven't got their message or I haven't got their, their phone call or something. I just, I don't even- I don't defend myself. 00;47;20;11 - 00;47;41;20 Thomas Moore I just say, oh, that's unfortunate. And then I just go on with the conversation. I don't, I don't apologize for it. I just- they've got to know that I'm not going to be that available and that accessible, and that's one way to deal with it. That's- I don't plan that. I don't want to be that way, but I am. 00;47;41;23 - 00;48;07;13 Thomas Moore And so I'm vernacular. [Laughter] That's what I do. And that's the way Thoreau was. And people thought he was a little, maybe, troubled. A lot of- today people write articles saying that he was on the spectrum, you know, that he was really kind of a- he had some problem somewhere. Well, they say that about Emily Dickinson, too, you know, that she, she was a recluse. 00;48;07;13 - 00;48;34;04 Thomas Moore There was something wrong with her. What if that was her genius? What if that was the very genius, the thing that guided Thoreau, that made him who he was? And I think that fact is, by the way, when I say that, that many times the things that are considered our weaknesses and our problems, psychological problems, are our genius shaping us into the vernacular person we can be, the individual we are. 00;48;34;06 - 00;48;47;18 Thomas Moore So I would say be willing to be more vernacular, more eccentric, more unusual, not part of the crowd. That would be step one toward it. Be a good step into that freedom. 00;48;47;20 - 00;49;12;01 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Yeah. And I think about if, if I want to get any of my own writing done or when I want to go into nature and go in depth with nature, I can't have my technology with me. So I hide my phone in the other room. And so that's a deliberate thing that I've started to do. And if people are trying to call me or text me or send me an email, they're just going to have to wait. 00;49;12;01 - 00;49;35;21 J.R. Jamison So I think that's very good advice to allow ourselves the space to do that and not ask for permission to do that, because it's a way of being. As I've watched my own journey of living a transcendental life and finding deeper connection and meaning to the earth and the universe, meditation has played an important part in that process for me. 00;49;35;22 - 00;49;51;27 J.R. Jamison You write about meditation versus contemplation, and that meditation teaches us to sit in silence, while contemplation allows us to get closer to nature. And that was sort of an “a-ha” moment for me when I was reading your book. Talk more about this concept. 00;49;51;29 - 00;50;14;18 Thomas Moore Moore: Well, first of all, I want to say that I love meditating and I'm a pretty good meditator. I started meditating when I was 13, you know, when I entered that monastery. I probably had meditation an hour a day or an hour and a half a day, which for a 13 year old is pretty good. And then as the time progressed, I did more and more meditation and really appreciated it and liked it. 00;50;14;20 - 00;50;36;01 Thomas Moore I still can do it, when I'm in a situation where people are meditating, I can get into that easily. I zone out within seconds. You know, I really I'm used to it. I have a muscle for that. But I also see limitations in that kind of meditating. And I don't mean to be critical here. I'm just, this is me. 00;50;36;01 - 00;51;06;01 Thomas Moore I'm talking about my discovery for myself. I'm not telling anyone else they should do what I do, but I find a difference. To me, to contemplate means to be somewhere, someplace, looking, my eyes open. When- I call sometimes “soul meditating” as opposed to “spirit meditating.” It's a deeper, you know, more embedded in life kind of meditating. So I tell people when they- I'll tell people that are listening to me give a talk somewhere, 00;51;06;01 - 00;51;25;01 Thomas Moore I’ll say, let's take a few minutes of, of soul meditating. Now, I'd like you to listen to all the sounds you hear while you're meditating. Oh, sounds in the room. Really listen to them. Hear them like music, you know, and open your eyes and see where you are, if you're inclined. If you want to close your eyes, that's okay. 00;51;25;01 - 00;52;02;26 Thomas Moore But open them sometimes to see where you are and see the world you're in, and contemplate that world and get to know it where you are. Know where you are. You know, be somewhere. Don't be nowhere. Don't be up there somewhere, flying by your wings in the ethers. Be where you are in the world you're in. And that's the kind of contemplating, I sometimes call it that because I think it's, it's, it's more watching and looking and being- listening and being in that world, but in a way that you go deep into it and you become absorbed and you lose yourself in it. 00;52;02;28 - 00;52;11;19 Thomas Moore Losing yourself is part of meditating and contemplating, and you lose yourself by being in it instead of being away from it. 00;52;11;21 - 00;52;20;25 J.R. Jamison Jamison: If someone has never read Thoreau and has never visited Walden Pond, what do you hope they'll understand by the time they finish your book? 00;52;20;27 - 00;52;50;01 Thomas Moore Moore: I would like them to- You know, it's a funny way of talking. I really don't want anybody to think anything. You know, it's there. You do what you do, but I, I would, I would like someone to say that they found a new way, a new way that is- that they haven't seen before. They discovered some new little techniques and ways of phrasing things that they hadn't heard of before. 00;52;50;08 - 00;53;19;19 Thomas Moore Something fresh about living deliberately. Living with more awareness, with living with more engagement, and then- and commitment to the world in which you are. To really be in it, instead of playing around with it and being half in and half out. If you really live your life and live the life that's given to you, not the one that somebody told you you should live - anybody, nobody should tell you how to live. 00;53;19;21 - 00;53;42;12 Thomas Moore You know, you, you you live your own life. Don't live Thoreau's life. Live your life. I tell people, don't- Don't do what Thoeau did and play a flute by a stream because you know you're going to be like Thoreau. Don't do that. Go into a city and be on a subway and find yourself there, if that's where. 00;53;42;12 - 00;54;05;16 Thomas Moore If that's what speaks to you, whatever it speaks to you, do that, and, but do it in that Thoreauvian way where you, you are yourself, you’re eccentric, you’re vernacular, you’re poetic, and you find a way to express yourself where your thinking and inner life is connected to your outer world. 00;54;05;16 - 00;54;08;18 J.R. Jamison Jamison: And you're following the westerly wind. Right? 00;54;08;21 - 00;54;25;24 Thomas Moore Moore: And you're following the westerly wind. That's an important thing. It's the westerly wind. That's, that's an art. You know, the history of art. You see the wind sometimes being shown. It's the west wind that blows things in. And that's what Thoreau paid attention to. 00;54;25;26 - 00;54;36;11 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Thomas Moore, number one New York Times bestselling author, psychotherapist and public thinker and author of the new book “The Cure at Walden Pond,” thank you for joining me on The Facing Project. 00;54;36;13 - 00;54;44;01 Thomas Moore Moore: It's been a great pleasure, J.R.. I would love to talk to you again sometime. I think we have left a few things unsaid. 00;54;44;06 - 00;54;59;20 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Absolutely. I wish we had more time together. “The Cure at Walden Pond” is out now everywhere books are borrowed and sold. Learn more about Thomas Moore at ThomasMooreSoul.com. [Theme music] 00;54;59;23 - 00;55;24;25 J.R. Jamison Jamison: Thank you again to Thomas Moore for joining me on today's show, and to his publisher, Pegasus Books, for providing a complimentary copy of “The Cure at Walden Pond.” To listen to past episodes of this program, visit IndianaPublicRadioProject.org/TheFacingProject, or find us on your favorite podcasting app, or on YouTube or on the NPR network, or just ask your smart speaker to “Play The Facing Project on NPR.” 00;55;24;27 - 00;55;48;24 J.R. Jamison To continue the conversation about this episode, find us on Facebook and Instagram at Facing Project. The Facing Project is recorded at Indiana Public Radio at Ball State University in beautiful and wonderful and evergreen Muncie, Indiana, and is produced by the amazing producer and audio engineer extraordinaire Sean Ashcraft. The show is distributed nationally through PRX. I'm your host, J.R. Jamison. 00;55;48;28 - 00;55;55;01 J.R. Jamison And until next time, I wish you the courage to share your own story and the empathy to listen to others. [Theme music fades]